The Game Critique

I first like to preface this with: I love BioWare. I love their games, I love their worlds and I love their characters and I love the experiences they have imparted onto me. Baldur’s Gate is my favorite game of all time. I think that series is the pinnacle of the CRPG.

Right now that that’s out of the way. YOU SUCK!

Let me explain. For those who follow me, or care to pay attention to anything I have to say at all, know I called Dragon Age: Origins my game of the year back in 2009 even though I was only able to play about 12-14 hours of it. After that the game started to stutter and the frame rate made the game unplayable on a pretty low graphics setting. My computer did not have the muscle to keep up anymore. Then a month or so ago I got a new laptop, this one with enough horsepower to pull off pretty much anything any game asked of it at the highest settings. Then last Monday Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition went on sale on Steam as part of a weeklong promotion. I owned the base game and Awakening already, but none of the DLC. I wanted it and this was a third of the price of buying them individually. It was $20. I bought the game and let it download and install overnight.

So I start it up on Tuesday around noon. As it’s checking DirectX and Microsoft something or other as it will do a window pops up reminding my I have to redeem the DLC with a code I can find by left clicking the game in Steam. No problem. I clicked ok after I copied the code to clipboard and it sent me to a web page sign in. I haven’t signed in for months, if not in over a year because I had no reason to. The BioWare social network thing is not in any way, shape or form useful or necessary. I couldn’t remember which email address I used or what form of my password I used. So I tried them all. One of the worked and I activated the code. I started the game up and checked on the DLC. It was all “Unauthorized.”

I clicked the ‘go to my account’ button. It opened another web page with a different account from a different email address. This was where the game was registered thanks to Steam.

My reaction:

After spending some time calming down before talking to a real person at EA support help desk where the BioWare Social Network sent me. Let me repeat that, Steam connected my account and I registered with a BioWare site and had to fix it with EA support.

The first guy was unhelpful. He misunderstood my original problem. I looked up my report and found the question entered had nothing to do with my problem. He tried and I don’t begrudge him. I calmed down again and tried the chat window help desk this time. (After I tried to get a line with Steam to see if I could get a refund. I couldn’t even find contact information.) Nancy, bless her, as soon as I explained it, came back and told me that she had fixed the redeem code. So I tried it. It didn’t work. I told her that and she corrected me by saying no, she had already done it for me with the correct account. I checked and yes it was fixed. I deleted the other account, which shouldn’t have existed in the first place. I’m wondering how it came to be.

So I start up the game to make sure all the DLC is there only to find it is still “Unauthorized.” Back to EA Support. Luckily there was a question there that already addressed my problem and I followed the instructions by going into an XML file and changing all the appropriate 1s into 0s. Now it all works. In total to get my content running took my 3 hours. That’s 3 hours of highly technical work and knowing where to go, what to ask and in the end knowing how to change file information. Those who were on twitter could see my blood pressure rising at this. As Kateri_t put it:

Hell some of them were right along with me:

I can’t imagine some guy who bought it on Steam knowing even half of this. How would an unplugged consumer who didn’t keep up with news, have a twitter support network of technophiles and an above reasonable amount of computer technical knowledge cope with this problem? Anecdotally this is a pretty common problem for their DLC too if my informal straw poll of twitter is anything to go by. Why is it a problem? Because they put so much bullshit, unnecessary hurdles, stopgaps and walls in the way of registering paid content. It occurs to me now I could have gotten a fan made crack patch and circumvented the whole thing. I am the paying customer and got the shaft by doing things the right way.

I don’t blame BioWare. I blame EA. I think I have compelling evidence for why too. EA set up this stupid DRM scheme by which you have to be logged in to their servers to play a single player game. For it to work it has to be registered and connected. If you want to play the DLC it has to be constantly connected. So if your connection goes out or hiccups, or EA servers go down like they did a month and a half ago, or you play with a PC that just isn’t plugged in at the moment means that your single player game WILL NOT WORK. Then there is the system for buying your content. You have to purchase BioWare points, a dumb enough idea when Microsoft did it, but at least those work for the whole console and not one companies games. Then you have to purchase them on a different website. I was offered EA store credit to rebuy some of the DLC, except they don’t sell the DLC on the EA store. I blame EA because BioWare already has an elegant solution in place.

If it weren’t for this reminder message popping up and then sending me to the Social Network site to redeem the code I could have done it in the main menu of the game. There is a selection called Downloadable content and an option in there that says “REDEEM CODE.” You can also buy the stuff there directly. No fuss, no mistakes, no talking to customer support reps. Keep is simple.

The other issue is, I bought the Ultimate Edition. The DLC was included with this version of the game. It downloaded when I downloaded the game from Steam and installed along with it. I purchased a game where the content came with it, but I had to register the DLC…why? The purpose of the Ultimate Edition was to have there be no need to buy all the DLC individually; it’s on the disc or Steam download as the case may be. Why did I have to register it when you know for a fact it’s part of the game and comes with every copy of the Ultimate Edition?

I don’t see EA or BioWare changing their practices on either front of this anytime soon. I nearly spent $20 for a new desktop icon. I was able to resolve the issue after 3 hours. I got lucky. I was lucky I knew what I was doing and had friends on Steam who could and were willing to help me and put up with me.

So when the inevitable Dragon Age II: Ultimate Edition/GOTY Edition comes out and I get that, I hope they’ll have fixed the user interface and process to getting the free DLC which is already on the damn disc. All I can do at this point is reaffirm my original statement.

YOU SUCK.

For those of you following me on twitter, which I suppose is all of you given my repeat audience, you will know of my present troubles. Two weeks ago I had midterms, which took up a lot of my time. The week after that I got a horrible case of the flu that my only condolence was that it happened after midterms. The unfortunate downside being that I missed a good deal of classes and did not write the essays that were due due to the fact my brain could not function properly. Then last Sunday, almost a week after I first became ill my computer corrupted itself. I had it fully reformatted by IT specialist and it seemed to be all clean and new. Then when I went to reinstall programs, it was a no go near the end. The whole system started to go down once again. Then earlier this evening when the whole machine crapped out and could not function. It doesn’t even recognize there being an OS on it anymore. The present theory is that the hard drive itself is corrupted, as in physically there is something wrong with the disk. Tomorrow I plan to purchase a new one and get it installed, then skip over Vista entirely and try out a free copy of Windows 7 a friend has and then get all my data and files back on. Hopefully that will be done by tomorrow night. I will then have all of Sunday to get myself caught up on the two weeks of school work I’m missed.

As of right now, I’m standing in the front hall of my dorm typing this out at a computer station as they vacuum the floor behind me.

That is my reason for not working on anything here. This is unfortunate, especially since this is the busiest and most important time of the year for a video game critic. Though I console myself with Q1 of 2010 is going to be the same or even more so.

Also I want to get one last word on this Citizen Kane of Video Games. This is a cry to the mainstream as anyone in the critical community, brainysphere or not, is pissed off at this subject for more than a few reasons. But as I was walking home from a friend’s apartment my mind wandered to it and I have to write it. Skip it if you want.

Most people decry “when are we going to get our Citizen Kane?” What they really are asking, “when are we going to get a sufficient enough example to point to when people give us that snobbish look whenever we get caught talking about them?” They want to have something where they can just say the title and have the other person nod and move on, because they will just know what they are talking about, even if they have not played it themselves. Just like Citizen Kane is that title even though most people have not seen it, but it became the emblem of film as art. Watchman did this for comic books.

In reality the Citizen Kane of video games has nothing to do with cultural relevance, or artistic viability, but with gamer’s own insecure egos. Our own predisposition fears of being cast as the outsider, while at the same time, hypocritically decrying anything that interferes with our own geek hierarchy when regular people come into the scene. We are a strange bunch, but personally I separate myself from that portion of the community. I like to think of myself as a geek with the ability to step back and recognize there is a larger world and have enough humility to realize I am not the end all be all.

I say that of course, without a hint of irony, as THEGameCritique.

Finally, when I do start writing again, it wont be anything recent. I have two essays for Heroes of Might and Magic II and then I’m probably going to move on to Silent Hill and/or King Kong. Unless I can get Dragon Age running of course. Also I plan to continue my Indie Game Spotlight over at Creativefluff.com and get more literary type criticism done over here. I also plan to start a new series looking at the form of video games. Rather than specific design choices of mechanics, I mean as Scott McCloud describes the six layers of art, Form is number two. I plan to start a series of posts, also at Creativefluff.com, of using example video games to explore the form of the medium. So look forward to that and see you on the other side.

I try to be civil. I try to be nice and understanding to everyone. In other words it takes a lot to piss me off. Thank you to the asshole that broke into my room and stole my PlayStation 3. Thank you for making me have to take time out of my already packed and less than bright day to file a report and remove all credit information from my account. Thank you for changing my view of the world and making me feel no longer safe in my own room. Thank you for actually going out of your way to figure out which closed door was unlocked and which one contained an empty room so you could steal their stuff. Believe me this is one of those times I really wished I got back early so I could pound your face in. And most of all thank you for teaching me what has to happen, what a person has to do to make me hate them. Asshole, my friend, you have accomplished a rare feat in the world. You have managed to make me hate another human being. A feat that many of my friends sometimes don’t think is possible. I was going to put a real post up today. I was planning on getting one out every day this week. I had more than enough material. But somehow it doesn’t seem worth it anymore. I’ve had a busy day that wasn’t over yet and thanks to you got completely derailed. 5 hours later I find myself in an increasing state of pissed off and writing this instead of everything else I could be doing and should be doing. This was a bad day for me already, so thank you asshole for making it even worse. So I will put this in a way you can understand me. You want the police to find you, because you don’t want me to find you. I have enough stress without having to wonder if I’ll get what’s mine back and having to wonder if I have deal with this shit ever again. I don’t like having to lock my door just to go to the bathroom for 5 minutes. I’m not even sure I can get another one. They don’t make the 60 gig model anymore and even if they did, I don’t have the money. The hard work I poured into doesn’t matter anymore, my saves, my money, my time and now my critical effort. My only consolation is that a lot of my profile’s stuff is online and not on the machine.

To any readers I might have picked up I will finish up whatever work and game essays I still have. I might post a piece on what little PC gaming I own or DS gaming, but the fact of the matter is, most of the work I had coming up was on the PlayStation. Time will tell if I’ll even bother anymore.

Oh and one last thing.

Thanks asshole and FUCK YOU!

I decided to not write on it immediately, get a good night sleep and and take some time to digest what Ubisoft has just done. I was angry last night when I checked IGN and found this little tidbit heading the day of news. Basically Ubisoft will release a DLC pack for their recent game, Prince of Persia. It will included an increase in difficulty, two new unlockable skins, a new attack for the Prince, and a new power for Eleka. So far there’s no problem, in fact the increase in difficulty is a much welcome addition, though a difficulty choice at the beginning of the game would have been much better choice, but whatever. However, it is the other additions that really pissed me off. A new location, a new enemy that amounts to a reskining of an old one, and, get this, an epilogue that continues on from the main narrative.

Part of my anger was probably that I found out just as I was putting finally touches on what I thought would be my last essay on the game. Now that I’ve let some time pass to coll off, I find myself still angry at Ubisoft, but not for the same reason. Why wasn’t any of this in the published game? This is seems like nothing more than a tool to gouge more money from the players.

My feelings on the epilogue content are thus. Their so called epilogue wont add anything to the story, but instead will create a new problem, Eleka and the Prince will go about like they did in Act 2 of their adventure, and then reset the status quo so that there can still be a sequel. The very fact that this DLC exists is proof that Ubisoft wont allow some reasonable conclusion to be reached in this game, not if there is room to do it in the sequel.

Fallout 3 offered a unique in game explanation for the DLC to be integrated. It is an elaborate VR machine of certain events in Fallout universe’s history. Or Mirror’s Edge DLC, which isn’t story based at all and is more time trials, which is just an extra to the main game.

We are given an end to the game, however we feel about it we do have an end. It just screams of a quick cash in, especially when their representative admits that the new enemy is a reskin of the Hunter/Warrior. Of course they also admit that you do not have to finish the game to play the DLC, so everyone could just figure it as AU, in which case it has no implications on the story, which they think it does.

Here’s the real question though. Since it does take place after the main game, will Eleka have any mention of the Prince reviving her or his new feelings towards her that caused him to do so? Given that you don’t have to finish the game to play it I think not.

…

Grrrrrrrr…